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Warwick Mansell has laid bare the risk of increased social segregation in state schools thanks to a range of reforms proposed by government that will reduce scrutiny of school admission arrangements (Is covert school selection about to mushroom?, 22 March). These include the education bill's proposal to remove the responsibility of local authorities to establish a school admission forum and reduce the freedom of the school adjudicator, as well as its plan to slim down the school admissions code.
Even though experience shows there are far greater problems with admissions at schools that control their own admissions, the government is currently giving many more schools this power through an expansion in academy schools, along with its free school programme. This is doubly alarming as another part of the bill proposes to stop Ofsted inspecting what steps schools take to promote community cohesion.
Through its eagerness to reduce bureaucracy and give schools greater autonomy, the government is proposing to take away a range of important protections that stop schools operating in a narrow and exclusive way. Is this wise?
It is not too late to think again and for parliament to amend the education bill so as to retain these important safeguards. Schools should be engine rooms of cohesiveness. Future generations will not thank us if we allow them to entrench social divisions further.
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain
Chair, Accord Coalition
• I am surprised that some teachers have spoken up in favour of Michael Gove's plans to fast-track selected students onto A-level courses at 14, with Chris Howard, headteacher of Lewis school, Pengam, even dismissing GCSEs as "an unnecessary staging post", arguing that students should just be tested at 18 (Brightest pupils could skip GCSEs to start A-levels aged 14, 19 March).
Whatever their limitations, GCSEs (like O-levels before them) serve two useful functions. First, they can provide a broad grounding in a range of subjects (numeracy, literacy, science, history, languages etc); even the more gifted students at 14 may not know which of these they wish to pursue to a higher level, or even whether they intend to remain in education past 16. Second, passes at GCSE provide what is surely a pretty good indicator of a student's A-level potential, untainted by the instincts or biases of already overworked teaching staff. Imagine the recriminations that would ensue for the teacher should any student, fast-tracked in a well-intended decision, later drop off the course or fail to deliver at A-level, possibly heading out into the workplace without even a healthy clutch of GCSEs to put on their CV. It is surely better for any child to be a modest success at the lower level than an apparent failure at any level.
Nigel Longhurst
Liverpool
• As a literacy tutor, working in two primary schools, I find that Michael Gove's target, that children should aspire to read 50 books a year, is unattainable by all but a very few children (Report, 22 March). The danger is that children who do not meet this extreme benchmark will come to regard themselves as failing in literacy. There are already too many quantitative targets in education. This is an unwelcome addition. To have such a target set by a government whose policies are leading to the closure of public libraries is as ironic as it is tragic.
Becky Butler
London
• I was disappointed to find that Wednesday's Guardian contained no report of the UCU's strike against planned pension reforms in 47 English universities on 22 March. This industrial action, which many students have supported, was taken in response to the employers' attempts to raise the retirement age, increase contributions for members, and terminate the final salary element of the scheme. Combined with UCU strikes in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, which culminate in a day of industrial action across the UK today, this effectively constitutes the first nationally co-ordinated refusal of the coalition's ruthless attacks on the public sector.
Dr Matthew Beaumont
London
• The belated concerns of Vince Cable and David Willetts about fee levels will be a surprise to all those who warned that fees would inevitably rise if the coalition adopted the Browne review's short-sighted view that public funding for higher education teaching was a subsidy rather than an investment (Report, 15 March). Unfortunately, this is precisely what happened when George Osborne cut teaching funding by 80%. Ministers are now searching for ways in which to limit the market that they created and the fees levels required to maintain the quality of the student experience in the face of reductions on a scale not applied to any other areas of public investment.
However, Cable and Willetts are absolutely correct to raise questions about the risks posed to universities by the policies of their cabinet colleagues. Andrew Lansley's health reforms abolish the strategic health authorities. They currently award contracts for the pre-and post-registration education and professional development of nurses, midwives and the allied health professions – all courses provided by universities in conjunction with NHS providers. The replacement body proposed by Lansley is not yet in place, has no budget, governance arrangements or staff to assess student numbers or award these contracts worth millions of pounds in 2012-13 – the same year that universities are required by BIS to introduce a market in fees.
Michael Gove appears to believe that the teachers of the future should be trained on the job. In spite of evidence to the contrary and excellent Ofsted reports, Gove wants to replace university-led provision of teacher training with Teaching Schools and has already cut teacher-training numbers and contracts. In some universities this not only puts 25% of their turnover at risk, but also the partnership and professional development schemes that universities have promoted to support school and college improvement.
Meanwhile, against all advice, Damian Green and the Home Office continue to suggest that international students are a problem rather than a benefit to the UK, directly undermining the successful international higher education partnership activities of UK universities and Britain's export earnings.
Cable and Willetts may have at last got the plot. Unless other government ministers listen and stop the pursuit of policies regardless of their wider impact or the evidence base, the interests of universities in England and their contribution to UK plc are unlikely to be well-served.
Pam Tatlow
Chief executive, million+
• It is encouraging that students on the youth and community work degree course at the University of Huddersfield (Letters, 15 March) are reading Paulo Freire. It is even more encouraging to see how perceptive they are of Freire's ideas on education to see the irony in covering his ideas about liberatory education in a university curriculum.
Freire is certainly not forgotten and there are many of us who, for a number of years, have used his ideas not only in education but socially and politically. The Freire Institute works with others in this country and overseas. We offer programmes of social analysis; training for transformation and community organising. We use Freire's ideas andmethods, and we include in this work the ideas of Saul Alinsky. In all the talk of the "big society" and the training of community organisers there appears to be little recognition of the ideas of Freire and of Alinsky. This is not surprising, as the radical nature of education in which people themselves are both teachers and learners is far more radical than anything this government is likely to encourage, let alone recommend. The Freire Institute welcomes interest from anyone wanting to take seriously Freire and Alinsky's ideas as means of transformation. We have international contacts and are hoping to expand our work in this country.
Ron Mitchinson
Chair, The Freire Institute